Inverse Hipster Bike Move

What better way to make the point that Highland Park is not the next Echo Park than by moving your “hipster” butt and all your worldly possessions in opposite direction of alleged hip-ness, by bike?

A recent LA Weekly article tried to make the case that the Highland Park area is "the new Echo Park". That is, Highland Park is the new place for low rent, young, fashionable people to move.

Lately, a lot of people have been ragging on this fair barrio of mine. Guys with unwashed hair and paint on their jeans complain about how Echo Park is becoming too gentrified, too much like our now-grown-up neighbors in Silver Lake. (Shocking to realize it’s been more than a decade since Beck was couch-surfing his way to stardom.) Someone actually complained the Gold Room isn’t “dangerous enough anymore.”

Eavesdropping on these often drunken conversations, one name keeps getting thrown around as a solution to the existential dilemmas of the ultra-hip. “I’m going to a house eviction party in Highland Park tonight.” “That doom-surf-rock band Sandy Pussy is playing out in Highland Park tonight.”
– Kai Flanders, LA Weekly Pop-Ed, February 3, 2012, “Why Highland Park Is the New Echo Park“

Our local Patch blog, and most commentors, disagreed, but the damage is likely already done.

To stem the tide of move-ins caused by that LA Weekly article, a friend of mine, E., moved his entire household from Highland Park to Echo Park (to escape the flood of hipsters?) this past Sunday, February 19, 2012. An inverse hipster bike move!

The kicker is that he did the move by bike. Not just his bike – but about eight or nine other bikes outfitted for carrying cargo.

I helped with my bakfiets, others loaned heavy duty trailers or their knot tying skills, and we all pedaled away to deliver a household’s worth of goods from an cramped apartment in Highland Park to a small home in Echo Park on a sunny Sunday in February of 2012.

Wondering where we got the idea? A place filled with more hipsters than Echo Park and Highland Park combined: Portland (ca. 2006)!